Frequently Asked Questions
…or How To Do Most Anything on Dgrin

• Dgrin Forum Rules
  
  
• The Relationship: Dgrin and SmugMug
  
  
• How to Post on Dgrin
  • Create a New Thread
  • Quick Reply
  • Reply to a Thread
  • Reply to a Post (with quote)
  • Multi-quote
    Also:
    • Posting Icons Explained
  
  
• Posting Pictures
  • How to Embed an Image in Your Post (Posting PIctures)
  • Attaching vs. Embedding
  • Stretchy
  
  
• The Dgrin User Control Panel
  • General Control Panel Info
  • Subscribing to Threads
  • Creating an Avatar
  
  
• How to Use the Search Tool
  • Before You Ask, Search!
  • Google Search and Advanced Dgrin Search
  
  
• Dgrin Themes (Viewing Styles)
  
  
• Advanced Topics
  • Creating Custom Searches
  • Customizing Dgrin Content (Excluding Forums)
  • RSS Feeds on Dgrin
  
  
• Playing Well With Others
  
  
• Need Something? Place Requests To Moderators Here or check out our Dgrin Forum Support
• And of course if you need any help with anything SmugMug, check out the many support forums available!
  
  
• Still looking for more? Here's What's Happening.

The Relationship: Dgrin and SmugMug


SmugMug is a great photo service that lets photographers share, sell and manage their photos online.

Digital Grin was created by SmugMug for the love of photography, giving shooters all over the world a friendly, open community to share and learn.

While Dgrin is hosted by SmugMug, it's run by volunteers whose goal is to create the best photo forum on the net. You don't have to be a SmugMugger to join up on Dgrin, but if you are you can always drop by their support forums for help with your website.



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How to Embed an Image in Your Post

• If you want to embed an image in a post, first start a new post or reply.
  On the post/reply page, look for the 'image' icon:
  
  
  
  
  When you click on the icon you will see a new small window popping up:
  
  
  
  
  In this window you can type or paste the address to your image to be embedded.
  After you the link is there, simply click the 'OK' button!
  

Hey, hold on.... that sounds simple but how do I find the address for the image?

• GET THE ADDRESS FOR IMAGES ON SMUGMUG
  First, make sure you are logged in to your SmugMug account.
  Then, navigate to the image you want to embed.
  In the top right corner you should see a 'share' button. Click on that, and then on 'get a link':
  
  
  
  
  This will take you to another page. Make sure it is on the 'Photo Links' page. You'll see a list of several links, all for the same image but a different size.
  
  
  
  
  Find the size you like and click on the 'copy' button next to it. (If you are sharing photos on Dgrin, XL is usually a good size).
  This copies the image address to your computer's memory.
  
  Go back to the dgrin post/reply and paste the image address in the popup window (CTRL + V on a windows computer, CMD + V on a mac).
  
  Click 'OK'.
  
• GET THE ADDRESS FOR IMAGES ON FLICKR
  
  Go to the image on Flickr.
  Near the top-left you can find a little arrow next to some icons. Click on the arrow and select 'grab a link':
  
  
  
  
  Select the address and copy it (CTRL + C on a windows computer, CMD + C on a mac).
  
  Go back to the dgrin post/reply and paste the image address in the popup window (CTRL + V on a windows computer, CMD + V on a mac).
  
  Click 'OK'.
  
  
• GET THE ADDRESS FOR OTHER IMAGES
  
  There are many other photo hosting services where you can store your images. Many of those have 'quick' ways of getting the image address. It is of course not possible to describe all the services but there is a 'general' way to get the address for an image.
  
  Navigate to an image, and in your browser right-click on the image. Usually a menu pops up:
  
  
  
  
  Select 'copy image address' (the exact words can be a little different in some browsers).
  
  Go back to the dgrin post/reply and paste the image address in the popup window (CTRL + V on a windows computer, CMD + V on a mac).
  
  Click 'OK'.
  
  

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Attaching vs. Embedding


When you create a post you have the option to attach a photo to the post:



Attaching an image is subject to some pretty confining limitations on size. You'll have to make sure that your image meets those limits before attaching. When you're embedding, the embed code takes care of the resize for you. It's much easier and preferable to embed. Attaching also applies pretty brutal compression to your images. Use attachments as a last resort.





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Stretchy


Dgrin will automatically resize any image that's too large to fit in your browser window.

Images that have been resized have a small magnifying glass and the words "Full Size" under them. Just click to see the original image size, and then "Close" or click on the image itself when you are done.


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User Control Panel

The Control Panel is where you:

• Edit your Profile
• Set your Privacy preferences
• Upload your Avatar and Profile Picture
• Edit your Signature
• Edit Forum Options such as: Private Messaging, Email, Thread Display Mode, Timezone, etc.

You can access your Control Panel by clicking on this icon in the upper right of any Dgrin page:


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Subscribing to Threads

A great way to keep track of threads that you've posted in is to subscribe to them.

You can do this individually when you create a post (NOTE: This is option is not available in Quick Reply):



But if you'd like to subscribe to all threads that you post in, there's an easier way. In Control Panel>Edit Options, you'll find this window:



Just set the preference as you'd like it. Most often subscribing with No Email Notification works best. Then, whenever you want to view your subscriptions, you can do so easily from the "More" menu:





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Creating an Avatar

Avatars are the images that appear next to your post and must be 80 by 80 pixels and under 19.5kb.

You can create your avatar in the image editor of your choice. Make sure you use the "Save For Web" option in order to keep the file size within the acceptable limits.

If you host your picture on SmugMug, then there's an easier way:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/custom-photo-sizes

Like this:
http://williams.smugmug.com/photos/258678223_b6wbu-80x80.jpg





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Before You Ask, Search!

Dgrin's a great community filled with people who are happy to help. They're a great resource.

But please search to see if your question has already been answered. It's important to search Dgrin, and the wider 'net via the search engine of your choice. Put the work in to finding your answer rather than ask others to do that for you. When you come up against a wall, reach out and the Dgrin community will be there for you.

Many times people will post questions on Dgrin that could easily be found by a quick Google search. Simply copying the key phrase from their post into Google gets just the answer they wanted.



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Google Search and Advanced Dgrin Search

Both Google Search and Dgrin Advanced Search are available in the same place:




Google search is the top box, and this allows you to use the Google search engine to search Dgrin. This can be helpful if you're searching for shorter terms (Dgrin doesn't index terms of 3 or fewer characters), or you simply want to search Google style.

The other advanced Dgrin search options allow you to refine your search results.






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Dgrin Themes (Viewing Styles)


You can choose between a dark and a light theme to suit your preference. Look for the "Style" drop-down menu at the bottom of your screen.



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Creating Custom Searches


You can bookmark search terms for those things you do most often. For instance, if you're always checking the People, Journeys and House of Canon threads, you can make a search which will return all new posts in just those three forums.

Each forum has an identifying number. You can find this number by going to the forum and grabbing the number after "f=".

For example, the Dgrin Forum Support Forum is 28:


So the custom search to find new posts in just this forum would be:
http://www.dgrin.com/search.php?do=getnew&include=28

You can add forums, separated by commas, like this:

http://www.dgrin.com/search.php?do=g...clude=20,33,28

This would return all new posts for People, Journeys and Dgrin Forum Support.

You can change "include" to "exclude" which will return all galleries except those listed.



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Customizing Dgrin Content (Excluding Forums)

Warning: This will hide parts of Dgrin from your view. But that's kind of the point, eh?

If you just never go into certain forums and want to hide them from your view of Dgrin, you can choose to exclude them in your Control Panel>Edit Options. If you change your mind in the future, just hit reset.




You can also hide stuff on a more temporary basis using the green arrows you see around on Dgrin:





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RSS Feeds on Dgrin

RSS links look like this:

http://www.dgrin.com/external.php?type=RSS&forumids=FORUMID

You simply replace the FORUMID with the ID of the forum you want the feed for, which is the number after "f=" in the URL:



So, for the Dgrin Site Info and Support Forum, the RSS feed would be:

http://www.dgrin.com/external.php?type=RSS&forumids=28

You can string multiple forum IDs together, separated by commas, like this:

http://www.dgrin.com/external.php?type=RSS&forumids=12,35,31,25



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Playing Well With Others


Dgrin is as good as we make it.

• Unless it's obvious in the thread, don't hijack it by adding your photos. Please ask first.
• Ask before editing someone else's photos, even if it's the best way to illustrate your point.

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What's Happening?

Our community has a lot of interesting things going on. Here's a few:

• Dgrin Challenges
• Wedding Challenges
• The Dgrin Game (photo association) and its comments thread
• The Old Photos Only Dgrin Game and its comments thread
• Our Where to Buy and Where to Rent threads
• SmugMug Strap thread
• The Flea Market for buying and selling used gear and offering services
• Take a trip around the world with our Collected Journeys thread
• Landscape Shooting Ops and Events
• Wildlife shooting Tips and Resources
• Tips, Threads, Exercises and Inspiration for Street Shooters
• Macro Shooting Tips and Tutorials
• Moderator's Choice--The Best of Techniques
• Shooting video? Check out our Action! forum.
• If you have a question or suggestion about any location, check out our Location, Location, Location! forum
• Photographer's Resources has a bunch of good stuff for running your business
• and finally, if you've got something to share that's not in any of our forums, it goes in The Big Picture
  

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What are all those icons?


There are three icons at the bottom of every post.

1. Reply creates a new reply with the current post quoted.
2. Multi-quote toggles the post on/off for inclusion in a multi-quote post.
3. Quick Reply tells the forum which post you're replying to. If you also check the "Quote message in reply" box, then the content of that post will be quoted.

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Create a New Thread


It's easy to create a new thread.

Looking for information? Search before posting!

In the appropriate forum, click on the "New Thread" button at the upper left of the page.




Use descriptive titles so people know what you want right away. “I have a question” is vague. “How do I change my avatar?” is better.

You can use the formatting options in the edit panel to add links, embed images, etc.

Please do not use colors for your text. The default color is easy to read in both of our viewing styles. Changing the font color can make your post more difficult to read.

When you are ready to share your post with the world, hit the 'Submit New Thread' button.





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Quick Reply

If you're about to ask a question in a thread, stop and take a moment to read through it to make sure your question hasn't already been answered.

You'll find the Quick Reply box at the bottom of every page of a thread.

Type your reply in and click "Post Quick Reply" to have your post added to the end of the thread.




Quoting and Quick Reply

If you would like to include a quote in your Quick Reply, then you must first click this icon to the lower right beneath the post you would like to quote.

Then make sure that the "Quote message in reply?" box is checked. The post you've selected will be quoted in your reply.

Quick Reply is missing a number of options that are available in the standard reply. If you wish to access those options after you've already started a Quick Reply, click the "Go Advanced" button, where you will have all the posting options available to you.

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Reply to a Thread

The standard Reply button sits on the left side of your window at the top and bottom of any thread. This is the same as Quick Reply's "Go Advanced" mode.

NOTE: Titles are optional for replies, and most people don't title their replies.

When you are done, click on the 'submit reply' button.





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